The whole front of Cliff’s dark shirt was wet and sticky with blood, but I didn’t exactly want to start poking at it to find the wound. “Where did he get you?!” I yelled. Too loud, but my ears were still ringing from the gunshot.
“My side,” Cliff muttered. “I think it went through.”
It must have, judging by the amount of blood on his back. “Can you walk?”
I helped him up, and we stumbled out of the container park. Cliff had parked his SUV right around the corner, and I took a second to thank the gods of Las Vegas parking, who were really quite generous once you got off the Strip.
“You were supposed to stay with Juliet,” I cried as I helped him into the passenger seat. “How did you even find me?”
“Tracked your phone,” he said in a strained voice. “Dashiell’s orders. Last night.”
Goddammit, Dashiell! He’d told Cliff to stay with me instead of the other women, who were out there unprotected right now. Then again, I couldn’t deny that Cliff had probably saved my life back there.
But now I had to keep him from losing his. It felt weird to abandon the skinner’s dead body—my whole job was avoiding things like that—but I didn’t have a choice, and besides, he had two friends with him. If they were the hunters I thought they were, they would get his body out of there.
Cliff’s SUV still had my Bluetooth programmed in, so while I sped away from Container Park, he tapped in Laurel’s phone number for me.
“Hello, this is Laurel,” she said in a businesslike singsong.
“It’s Scarlett!” I yelled. Too loud, too fast. I forced myself to take a deep breath. “I need help.”
There was a moment’s pause, and then, “Hang on a second, Jules, this is work calling.” A little rustling, and then Laurel’s voice said urgently, “What happened?”
“Cliff, who was supposed to stay with you guys this morning”—I glared across the seat—“got shot. In the side. He needs a doctor, but we can’t go to a hospital. Can anyone in your clan help?”
Cliff grunted in surprise, and I realized he hadn’t known about Laurel being a witch. Oops.
There was a silence, lasting long enough for me to say, “Laurel? Can you still hear me?”
“Yeah. I just . . . no, none of my clan witches are doctors or nurses or anything . . .”
“But?” I prompted, hearing it in her voice.
“But when I worked at the Flamingo there was this woman we called sometimes, when one of the guests got hurt and we couldn’t call the cops. Turns out she’s an outclan witch.” She said the phrase with disgust, the way people in Bel Air would say “homeless.” “She’s on retainer to all the big casinos,” Laurel added. “She specializes in thaumaturge magic. Healing.”
“Do you still have her number?”
“Yeah, they made us memorize it.”
I got the number, thanked Laurel, and hung up. Then I called the thaumaturge witch.
Sashi Brighton answered her phone on the first ring, saying “Hello,” with an English accent. I quickly gave her my name and explained the problem. There was a long pause.
“I know I’m not with the casinos,” I added in a rush, glancing at Cliff. He was terribly pale, and his eyes were starting to glaze over. “But I’m Old World and I’ve got money. Please.”
“It’s not that,” she said faintly. “Just . . . Scarlett Bernard from Los Angeles? The null?”
“You’ve . . . heard of me?” What the hell? I could see Laurel or Silvio recognizing my name, because they were both deep in the Old World and had ties to LA. But I’d never heard of this woman, and she was outclan. It made no sense.
“We’ve a mutual acquaintance,” she said. “Look, I’ll text you my home address. Just get him here as quickly as you can.”
“Who—” I started, but she had hung up.
I glanced over at Cliff, as though he might explain what the hell had just happened. His eyes were closed. Crap.
“Cliff?” I pulled over and checked his pulse. Thready and weak, but there. His eyelids fluttered for a moment, but then he closed them again. “Hang on,” I muttered. I entered Sashi’s address into my phone’s GPS and peeled off as fast as I dared.
Sashi Brighton lived in one of the suburban areas off the Strip. It seemed like a nice enough area, but I was barely paying attention to anything beyond the GPS and the labored breathing coming from Cliff’s seat. By the time we reached her house, Cliff was completely unconscious. She opened the garage door the minute I pulled into the driveway, motioning for me to park next to the lone vehicle, a late-model Prius. As soon as I did, she started closing the door again.
Sashi was a stunning Indian woman in her mid to late thirties, with long shiny hair in a fishtail braid down her back, expensive jeans, and a canvas apron over a light sleeveless sweater. My mouth dropped open in surprise as she stepped into my radius. She was as powerful as Kirsten, or damned close.
“Help me get him inside,” she said in the same urgent-but-calm tone you hear from ER doctors everywhere.
She propped Cliff up under his good arm, and I sort of deadlifted his lower body, and between the two of us we managed to get him around the car and up the little steps leading into a clean mudroom. It opened directly into a kitchen, where Sashi had laid a pallet on the floor, along with a large and extensive first-aid kit. More of a first-aid suitcase, really.
She pulled out scissors and began cutting away Cliff’s shirt. “You have to move away from him,” she ordered. “My room is at the end of the hall. Get cleaned up and grab some of my clothes to put on.”
I looked down at myself. Cliff’s blood was smeared all over my jeans and tee shirt. “Really?” I said stupidly. She was just going to let me, a stranger, go into her personal space and raid her closet?
“Go!” Sashi barked. A little softer, she added, “Trust me. This is what I do.”
I kicked off my boots on the linoleum floor, where they wouldn’t make a mess, and bolted toward the bedroom in my socks.
Sashi’s bedroom was beautiful: clean and sunny, with yellow curtains and an Indian-print bedspread that was a welcome explosion of color in the otherwise minimalist decor. Walking a little stiff-legged from the drying blood, I made my way into the adjoining bathroom and surveyed myself in the mirror. The blood hadn’t gotten in my hair, but it had soaked through my shirt and the side of my pants where I’d helped haul Cliff, and run down my leg under the jeans. I considered it for a moment and decided that taking a quick shower would be less of a violation than accidentally smearing someone’s blood all over Sashi’s house. I opened cabinet doors until I found a clean, fluffy towel, and then I got under the hot spray, trying to calm myself down. My radius had expanded a little when I was panicking about Cliff, and I needed to pull myself together so I didn’t turn Sashi into a human when Cliff needed her magic.
When I was sure I was reasonably okay, I got out, put on my own bra and underwear, and dressed in the first clothes I found: yoga pants and a workout tank. I saw the labels as I pulled them on, and almost took them off again. The top and pants combined probably cost more than a night at my hotel. But they were clean, and I had the feeling that if I kept digging through Sashi’s clothes I wasn’t going to find anything cheaper anyway.
When I was dressed, I wasn’t sure what to do next. I had my cell phone, since it had been in my jeans pocket, but I was effectively trapped in the bedroom until Sashi helped Cliff. If she could help him. I didn’t know anything about thaumaturge magic.
I took my phone out of my jeans pocket, intending to fold the bloody clothes. A wad of paper fell out of the pocket, too. The list of missing vampires, with their last known locations. Right.
Relief flooded through me: I couldn’t help Cliff now, and I didn’t even have a way of contacting Jameson. But this was something I could do. I left the pile of stained clothes on top of a magazine and carried the list to a small armchair in Sashi’s bedroom. I’d glanced over the list earlier, but I hadn’t taken the time to actually study it yet. I sat on the floor with my back against the chair and spread the list out on the carpet in front of me, studying the names of the missing vampires.